Teacher puts print on fashion

A Makoura College teacher has won a national fashion design contest in which one of his senior students was also a finalist.

Hohepa Thompson, Ngati Kahungunu, started working at the Masterton school in March and for a second year running has won the chance to have his collection of garment prints modelled on a catwalk at New Zealand Fashion Week in September.

He and Makoura College senior design student Mikayla Vegar, 17, had digitally submitted an outline of their collections - respectively Mozzies and 1/16 - and an explanation of their designs to the print category of the 2013 Miromoda Maori Fashion Design Competition.

The competition also features avant garde, and established and emerging designer sections.

The Masterton pair were selected in the print category as two of the three national finalists, who each had their collections modelled live at a fashion showdown in Wellington on Friday.

Last year Mr Thompson, 28, raised a storm of controversy with his printed collection titled Dirty Laundry, which included a print featuring an image combining the ta moko of Maori activist Tame Iti superimposed on an image of the late Osama bin Laden.

Mr Thompson has produced both collections under his label Hori, which was a name he was often called in his younger days as he had lost a front tooth and "everyone called me Hori".

"The story behind it is the stereotyping. I didn't really like it."

Mr Thompson earlier said a similar inspiration had sparked the controversial collection that won him the same contest last year.

He said his latest collection explored ideas surrounding Maori who live and work in Australia - Mozzies - and blended images like Ayers Rock and the Tino Rangatiratanga flag, a tattooed Maori face gazing through the slit of a Ned Kelly helmet, and a fantail with Australian dollar notes as tail feathers.

He had spent some time on the Gold Coast in Queensland, he said, and the prints combined images of New Zealand and Australia, Maori and Aborigine.

His printed tees and sweats are available at the Masterton clothing store, Legal Theft, and also online.

Ms Vegar, Ngati Kahu, said her 1/16 range was based on race-based "blood" measurements that reckoned the quantity of her Maori lineage as one sixteenth.

The range includes prints of several different measuring devices including a teaspoon, measuring cup and a calculator.

She said she was proud to be a finalist and was considering design as a career.